Yes, but they made much louder bang sounds than modern cap guns. I've noticed that the caps available now have so little gunpowder they barely work. At a very young age I dropped a brick on a roll of caps to see what would happen and the bang was so loud it made my ears ring. I tried something similar recently with some of the caps my son has and nothing much happened. The old cap guns also made a pleasant gunpowder smell.
only once did i manage to get the whole roll to pop on a single brick bash...thought i was gonna be permanently deaf...
I was frustrated that cap makers couldn’t seem to agree with toy gun makers on a standard alignment and spacing. The result was often either no bang (sometimes with wasted caps) or two bangs together. Hitting them on the floor with a hammer was more satisfying because that always worked.
I'll bet the print on everything you read was larger then, too.